Hale Woodruff (1900–1980), Blue Intrusion, 1958. Oil on canvas, 70 x 40 in. (177.8 x 101.6 cm). Grey Art Gallery, New York University Art Collection. Anonymous gift, 1958.35. © Estate of Hale Woodruff/Elnora, Inc. Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, NY, NY

Hale Woodruff first won critical recognition in a 1926 Indianapolis competition for black artists. Moving to Paris the following year, he studied the work of Monet, Cézanne, and the African American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner (who lived in France). Returning to the United States during the Great Depression, Woodruff began teaching at Atlanta University, a new school for black students. There he adopted the Regionalist style, which he employed for his late 1930s murals recounting the story of the Amistad mutiny for Talledega College.

Woodruff moved to New York in the mid-1940s and taught at NYU until 1967. He emerged as an important member of the New York School, working on the border between abstraction and figuration. The forms in his work were inspired by diverse sources, such as Ashanti gold weights from Ghana and children’s sidewalk drawings. Reflecting his lifelong interest in Civil Rights, in 1962 he became a founding member of Spiral, the influential group addressing the condition of African American artists.